How Secure Are RISC-V Chips?


When the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities were first uncovered in 2018, they heralded an industry-wide shift in perspective regarding processor security. As the IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index put it the following year, "2018 ushered in a new era of hardware security challenges that forced enterprises and the security community to rethink the way they approach hardware security." R... » read more

Hardware Fuzzing (U. of Michigan, Google, Virginia Tech)


A technical paper titled "Fuzzing Hardware Like Software" was published by researchers at University of Michigan, Google and Virginia Tech. The paper was presented at the 2022 Usenix Security Symposium. Abstract: "Hardware flaws are permanent and potent: hardware cannot be patched once fabricated, and any flaws may undermine even formally verified software executing on top. Consequently, ve... » read more

12 Ways To Elevate Electronic Design Process Using PADS eBook


When using PADS Professional Premium, designers have access to standard PCB design functionality, such as schematic definition and physical layout, as well previously optional add-on features (now standard) and all of the latest cloud apps, including: Schematic definition: Access to everything you need: Circuit design and simulation, Component selection, library management, and signal integr... » read more

Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions (CHERI) For Verification, With Better Memory Safety (Oxford)


A technical paper titled "A Formal CHERI-C Semantics for Verification" was published by researchers at University of Oxford. Abstract: "CHERI-C extends the C programming language by adding hardware capabilities, ensuring a certain degree of memory safety while remaining efficient. Capabilities can also be employed for higher-level security measures, such as software compartmentalization, ... » read more

Taking Power Much More Seriously


An increasing number of electronic systems are becoming limited by thermal issues, and the only way to solve them is by elevating energy consumption to a primary design concern rather than a last-minute optimization technique. The optimization of any system involves a complex balance of static and dynamic techniques. The goal is to achieve maximum functionality and performance in the smalles... » read more

Complete Reliability Verification For Multiple-Power-Domain Designs


With increasing design complexity and a heightened focus on reliability at all levels of integrated circuit (IC) design from intellectual property (IP) to full-chip, accurate and full verification coverage of the different reliability concerns within an IC design is essential. Designs containing multiple power domains add more complexity to reliability verification with the need to validate int... » read more

Bug-Free Designs


It is possible in theory to create a design with no bugs, but it's impractical, unnecessary, and extremely difficult to prove for bugs you care about. The problem is intractable because the potential state space is enormous for any practical design. The industry has devised ways to handle this complexity, but each has limitations, makes assumptions, and employs techniques that abstract the p... » read more

Addressing SRAM Verification Challenges


SureCore Limited is an SRAM IP company based in Sheffield, the United Kingdom, that develops low power memories for current and next generation silicon process technologies. Its award-winning, world-leading, low power SRAM designs are process independent and variability tolerant, making them suitable for a wide range of technology nodes. Two major product families have been announced: PowerM... » read more

Digitizing Memory Design And Verification To Accelerate Development Turnaround Time


By Anand Thiruvengadam, Farzin Rasteh, Preeti Jain, and Jim Schultz Some digital design and verification engineers imagine that their colleagues working on analog/mixed-signal (AMS) chips are jealous. After all, the digital development flow has enjoyed the benefits of increased automation and higher levels of abstraction for many years. Hand-instantiated devices and manual interconnection we... » read more

Extending The Benefits Of UVM To Include AMS: An Update On Accellera’s UVM-AMS Standard Development


By Tom Fitzpatrick and Peter Grove SoC teams can be divided up into design and verification groups. For digital designs, the Universal Verification Methodology (UVM), initially developed by Accellera and now standardized as IEEE 1800.2, has been the industry standard for the past decade. Since most SoC designs also have analog and mixed-signal IP blocks, it would be ideal for verification en... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →